Free speech in action

Published: 03/13/2012 at 6:09 PM

Barbara Simpson’s recent column, “Just shut up!” really hit home last week at a dinner my wife and I attended.

We were seated with two other couples, and all of us seemed to be of the same approximate age. Well, one of the women and I started a conversation, and we were both kindred spirits in that we were both conservative and, I think, rather informed on the true nature of the the Democratic Party and liberalism in general.

Once I started I was like a spigot pouring out everything I knew, and some things I had forgotten, about Democrats/ liberals/ progressives. I got into the history of how they started the KKK and Jim Crow laws, how they consistently voted against civil rights legislation, how the Democrats consistently lie, giving examples to bolster that statement, and so on.

Eventually, the “other” woman spoke up; I thought I had heard correctly what she had sai,d but I still said, “Excuse me?” She then said, again, that she didn’t like the conversation, and she wanted me to change the topic. I politely told her that she was never part of the conversation and I wouldn’t be shut up. I went on and lectured her, politely, while her husband just sat there mute-like. I ended the retort with the fact that when liberals can’t defeat the truth with lies of their own manufacture, they always resort to trying to shut up the other side.

Of course, there was a bit of awkward silence for a while, but then the first woman and I started back in, and when she mentioned that she and her husband enjoy time at the local rifle range, that opened up a whole new area, so I got in to gun ownership, hunting, shooting critters of various descriptions, carrying a sidearm for self-protection, which I am a firm practitioner of, and so on. I knew this had to be driving that other woman out of her mind, and I enjoyed the time immensely.

As soon as the dinner presentation was over, that woman and her husband were out of there like a bolt of lightning. Come to find out later that the two of them are staunch Democrats and do not tolerate those who aren’t. Bring ’em on – I love it.